Priority Two

Rationale: Gallaudet’s unique niche in the world requires us to actively work toward creating a sense of belonging for all members to support transformation and a robust future.

Goal: Address the most critical issues and needs to ensure Gallaudet continues to build a campus climate in which every member of the university community supports each other in feeling welcomed, included, and valued for their unique qualities and individual contributions.

Objective One: Strengthen the sense of belonging for all students, faculty, teachers, and staff with a focus on people from traditionally underrepresented, disempowered, and marginalized groups.

Objective Two: Define the strategies and actions that will strengthen diversity, equity, and inclusive excellence in all aspects of the University.

Develop and implement a plan to prepare and engage the community in ways that move Gallaudet forward toward the healing, growth, and community-sense of well-being essential for true transformation. This includes the following:

Create a university-wide diversity strategy and action plan that is built on available data as well as past and current programming that demonstrated positive results and that achieves equity and racial healing.

Systematically implement strategies to improve access and inclusion in a way that recognizes intersectionality and the multiple strategies of support and access required to assure a sense of belonging and capability to thrive.

Develop a plan that strengthens the practices, procedures, communications, professional development, and training programs to attract, hire, retain, and promote diverse faculty, teachers, and staff, particularly deaf people of color.

Continue President Cordano’s meetings with all major staff units and faculty members.

Invest in teaching and learning to strengthen the bilingual, multicultural, and digital literacy of our student body.

Clarify roles and responsibilities of all governance groups to advance the principles and practices of shared governance and to ensure diversity, inclusion and equity in their representation and decision-making processes.

Establish and pilot staff and faculty-led mentoring programs for staff and faculty accordingly.

Key Performance Indicators:

By the start of FY 2019, we will have an institutional diversity strategic plan and a road map towards inclusive excellence.

By the end of FY 2020, there will be an increased sense of belonging among students as measured by the NSSE and/or SSI (target forthcoming) (co-listed for Priority Three).

By the end of FY 2020, there will be improvement in the campus climate for faculty and staff as measured by the ESS (target forthcoming).

By the end of FY 2020, we will have completed the General Studies program curriculum revision to include a focus on multicultural, bilingual identify development in the context of intersectionality (co-listed for Priority One).

By the end of FY 2020, we will have completed the expansion of CBTL to include bilingual pedagogy, multicultural curriculum transformation, digital learning, and faculty development (co-listed Priority One).